5. Is your résumé / CV 56 pages long? In offline ‘real world’, just how often do you change job? Every month? I doubt it! But online, people change their direction or business with more frequency than an 8 week old baby goes through diapers. If you were an employer interviewing a candidate for a position are your company - and they presented you with their résumé or CV showing they had already had dozens of positions in a short period of time, what would that tell you?

That they are very experienced?… I don’t think so.

6. Fairytale? Storyland? Treat your online business like real business….in fact, it IS a real business, or at least that is how you should consider it. Work at it like a Hans Christian Anderson story, and there won’t be any ’Happily Ever After’. One of BIGGEST reasons why people jump from one opportunity / business to another, is simply because they don’t treat it seriously. If you consider it to be a little fun - fair enough, but don’t expect much in return.

7. Blurred vision? In other words….. FOCUS. If you don’t concentrate, or you become easily distracted, this will detract from your success, and will prove very costly. Don’t underestimate this. This is one of biggest reasons for ‘bandwagon business’ - people become easily led away from what they are doing - with lure of ‘greener pastures’.

8. Get committed. …and stay that way. The initial levels of enthusiasm are normally quite high, but then gradually taper away over time. Interest wanes, activity drops off, before you know it, you are spending less and less time on your business. That’s when next ’easy option’ seems tempting. You can develop a vicious circle of doing this repeatedly online - back to bandwagon jumping routine. Stick with it. Commit to it.

9. Do Stock Market. No - not literally. But you must INVEST - that is paramount. But before you grab your Credit Card and send it into meltdown mode - this isn’t necessarily all about money. The biggest and most vital investment to make, is your time, your energy, your enthusiasm - and you must regularly invest - keep topping it up, just like a Pension Plan or your Retirement Fund. You gotta keep adding to it. Although money will come into equation, because you simply can’t do everything for free - just don’t splash cash at every opportunity you see, without trying to turn each ’spend’ into a positive R.O.I. (Return On Investment).

10. Baahhh…..baaahhhhh…. Sheep follow sheep….follow sheep. This is another classic reason for ‘bungee business’ - or bouncing around from one to next. You see that all other sheep are going in one direction - so you follow. If ‘everyone’ is doing something, must you? It’s not necessarily best answer to go with flow, or follow crowd. Consider being contrary, contrasting, doing it with a twist - be different. You might just get edge over all other sheep.

An article by Gary Durkin Founder of the Internet Advice Center® http://www.InternetAdviceCenter.com

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved worldwide.

For those people using websites to promote home-based businesses, it can be stressful constantly trying to determine "what search engines want" and agonizing over every downward fluctuation in rankings that their website may experience.

Looking forward in time, I think we can expect that rankings will fluctuate frequently and will not be at all consistent from one search engine to another. It will be quite common that for a particular search term a website might suffer a drop in position ranking for search engine "A" and an increase position ranking for search engine "B" at essentially same point in time.

Rather than stressing out over every position ranking "wiggle", a better approach might be to just focus on "what do visitors to my site want?". The search engines are striving to give their users a quality (relevant) search experience and if you are focused in giving visitors to your website what they are looking for, these paths will meet somewhere down road.

You can save yourself alot of consternation by focusing upon needs of website visitors you are seeking to attract, rather than chasing frequently changing ranking algorithms of several search engines. Focus on a single target instead of chasing several moving targets at same time.

This article pertains to natural searches only, as paid search engine advertising is a completely different situation.